Is rationing the answer to consumerism?

[Norseman]

That is the question that's raised in this article. It's too long to easily quote, and there's lots of fascinating replies, so you should just go there and read.

The idea here is that we're secretly miserable due to our consumerism, always hurrying to spend more and more, and going deeper and deeper in debt. As a result both the people and the environment suffer greatly.

However all previous efforts to encourage people to voluntarily reduce spending have failed, people just won't listen. Therefore we should look to world war two, when the government managed to reduce private spending to a very great idea. Only the government can enforce a proper rationing system.

[Bounty]

Rationing worked during the war because the people knew resources were needed for a cause that went beyond luxury of comfort; even then, it wasn't a popular measure. I cannot see rationing working unless there is a major, visible, globally acknowledged crisis to back it up. Institute rationing while the people know the resources are still available and they'll see it as an attack on their life; you'll have a revolution on your hands.

On the other hand, luxury taxes combined with a lowered cost for essential items could work, perhaps, if it's presented well.

[Resinence]

I think your poll questions are Loaded.

You only give the choice of "Old Days Conservative Bullshit" or "Global Warming Denying Conservative Bullshit", but no mid-ground. There really is no reason people have to go back to the extreme rationing that was in effect during WWII (and I really don't think many people were any happier then, than now.). It's possible to not over-consume without going back to a spartan lifestyle.

[Darth Fanboy]

It sounds good at first, but what will happen is that the rich will just start buying rations off of those who desperately need cash. Nothing would really change.

[Ubiquitous]

It sounds good at first, but what will happen is that the rich will just start buying rations off of those who desperately need cash. Nothing would really change.

Exactly. The Black Market would always prevail. Even in a total war society, the BM cannot be fully suppressed.

[Norseman]

It sounds good at first, but what will happen is that the rich will just start buying rations off of those who desperately need cash. Nothing would really change.

Exactly. The Black Market would always prevail. Even in a total war society, the BM cannot be fully suppressed.

Aaaaah but don't you see? The Right People would be able to fly on airplanes and have nice dinners, but it's not THEY who threaten the world! It's us proles that have to be kept under control!

[Sea Skimmer]

You cannot simply introduce rationing; you also MUST install a comprehensive system of price and wage controls or else inflation will destroy the entire economy. Government orders must take over from the production impetus provided by consumers, and excess cash has to be soaked up somehow, normally through war bonds and similar savings programs. This was done even in the US in WW2, and it’s pretty much instant socialism. What’s more since it would be absurdly unpopular and unjustified in peacetime, it would also require a very oppressive government to impose it, would place the new system firmly in the communist category.

Fraud and abuse would be rampant as a matter of course; the black market would quickly become a significant portion of the entire economy. Ration coupons would be counterfeited in absurd quantities. During WW2 counterfeiting was so bad the US began using special paper similar to that used for currency to print them… only to see the mob hijack entire shipments of it. Modern electronic measures are unlikely to fair any better.

In short, the writer is a fucking moron.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Population control is the answer you're all looking for and a paradigm shift in economics. The capitalist model cannot continue like this indefinitely. Either we accept that we're going to make ourselves extinct in the process of attaining infinite growth without somehow creating a steady-state economy, or we produce a whole new system of economics and dramatically prune out numbers.

All of the problems we are facing now are down to rampant consumerism; the one true all encompassing religion. Credit crunches, resource depletion and poor health combined with political tensions are not helping us as a species, bar the wealthy few who help maintain the illusion that this is what we want. Buy bigger; zero interest; for a short time only; such brainwashing of people with the hope of self-fulfilment via material gains is not leading to an increase in overall well being and is only squandering our future's chances for a zero sum game with no end winners.

No one will seriously propose such a change. Overpopulation is not even touched by the most extreme environmentalists with a significant public audience and capitalism is embraced as the only sure fire way to run an economy because we all know history shows communism a dreadful failure. A lot of people reap the benefits of what we live in today and they say change doesn't happen in society until the older generation dies off. We don't have that long.

[Sikon]

If private consumerism and the individual accumulation of wealth driving entrepreneurship was stopped, some types of innovation and progress would be likely to suffer. As an analogy, the most non-capitalistic nation in the world today, North Korea, is a lot less known for technological innovation than Silicon Valley or even capitalism-permitting modern China.

In the long term, aside from posthuman possibilities like general AI, a primary determinant of whether mankind survives or just eventually dies out like 99+% of species have in earth's past is whether mankind practically forever expands into the near-infinity of space or just stagnates planet-bound.

A hypothetical government with a philosophy leading to enforcing rationing and opposed to general capitalism is likely to not permit such blatant energy-intensive "overconsumption" as space tourism, the type of innovation occurring today which is the greatest source of hope for a future in space.

Assuming a democracy, if all major allocation of resources was decided by the collective groupthink of the general public expressed through the government alone, such is likely to predictably avoid implementing unconventional thinking.

For example, in the case of the space example again, the average person lacks the necessary combination of intelligence, knowledge, and interest to even realize that the astronomical expense of current rockets is not an unavoidable consequence of energy/fuel expense, let alone support massive, "wasteful" expansion into space over spending financial resources on earth.

It could be a dull, dreary, stagnant civilization which ekes out a marginal existence for some period of time, keeping people alive with essential needs like a daily ration of basic food, perhaps minimizing the degree to which human consumption is beyond that of non-sapient animal species, perhaps sharing their fate.

As for myself, I'd rather live in a more varied, capitalistic world, where there are more potential opportunities, more real hope for the future. The U.S. isn't perfect, but I'm glad I live here and not in North Korea where others would decide how much restricted goods they thought I "needed," where no hope of achieving wealth for personal gain and for making a difference in the world through private endeavor can be a lifelong goal.

Happiness that helps make life worth living comes not solely from meeting basic needs alone like rations of rice and flour but, rather if those needs are met, also having some "wasteful" recreation and consumerist indulgences ... and ideally some hope, some potential for individual advancement.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Space exploration is the only step I could see being viable without screwing the system over currently. We can;t stay on this planet forever, even if we only had a global economy growing tenths of a percent annually. We'd hit a natural limit for something, whether it was energy, water, metals or phosphate etc.

The annoying trend is to downplay such research into going off to make colonies or find new worlds. The fallacious argument of "Why don't we sort out this planet first, yeah?" is always trotted out as if it makes perfect sense. We're never going to have a totally flawless society, whatever that may entail, and to wait until we're anywhere near that is to bring certain doom to the species. If perfection is everyone living like we in the West do today, with 9-to-5 jobs, flat panel TVs and flashy cars to go with our two weeks holiday abroad every year, then we may as well just save ourselves the bother and nuke eachother now.

Capitalism for all the benefits it can bring when running smoothly, also suffers for horrible short sightedness because of those very markets. Unless someone ventures out on a limb and says "Look, we can't keep up with this losing game. We need to think about the future, not just us in the here and now", then we may get a pioneer who makes our off-world possibilities become reality sometime.

Sadly, venture capitalists tend to look at the bottom line while scientists have to contend with their work going unrealised because it won't make megabucks now and dares think about our descendants over current profit margins. But we're not staying here if we have any sense. Bacteria in a Petri dish do not have a fun time when they reach the edges after a while.

[brianeyci]

Well rationing can work. If you're prepared to be like Hitler, and supress the black market with summary executions. How do people think Hitler rearmed himself despite the crushing economic factors? It sure wasn't because he was nice.

Obviously, nobody wants to live under a dictatorship, and that can only go on for so long. It's a miracle that North Korea has set itself up on a total war footing for forty years, while the West is crippled even after a few years of war. But that's the price for a higher quality of life for citizens.

You can attack space exploration as a waste of dollars, the same way you can attack someone for paying down a mortgage if the kids are starving. Problem is, NASA expenditures are not linked to revenue, so the two issues are unlinked. I thought it was insane when I first found out about it, but the US spends whatever it wants, whenever it wants. If they are going to do that, better to spend it ALL on infrastructure that will be impossible after the whole house of cards comes crashing down. A moon base can be relatively self-sufficient, and I can surely imagine a moon base being a huge inspiration for the American people in a time of great suffering. It sure is better than spending a lot of money on a military in hopes that when the crash comes the military can take over a lot of territory.

Rationing wouldn't work unless you're prepared to act like Hitler or Kim and ruthlessly destroy the black market, and then only for the short term since innovation will turn to zero. Entrepreneurs? Forget it. Science, learning? Takes a back seat to the ever expanding military which is needed to maintain the status quo. The army will be the last to suffer cuts, as the dinosaur dies from the inside out. Problem is as it dies, the army, the skin, remains intact, and the rest all has to perish as the soldiers are the last to starve. North Korea won't fall unless literally the entire civilian population has zero food, and the human body can live on very little food a day.

Rationing is like a bandaid when the patient needs surgery for internal injuries.

[K. A. Pital]

1) Rationing works, but it's really an excessive system. It's a viable excuse for crisis environments, but not much more. It's far too excessive for a resourceful country; the USSR for example abolished WWII-introduced rationing in 1947, just after WWII, signifying how important it was to do away with such excessive controls, even in a communist state.
2) Space:

A hypothetical government with a philosophy leading to enforcing rationing and opposed to general capitalism is likely to not permit such blatant energy-intensive "overconsumption" as space tourism, the type of innovation occurring today which is the greatest source of hope for a future in space.

Um... you're of course aware that the USSR spent enormous amounts of money on space exploration? Of course, it wasn't the rich people who went up in "tourist" trips (useless waste of resources indeed), but professional cosmonauts, who did scientific research, and comprehensive exploration drone programs, like the "Luna", "Mars" and "Venus" series.

Space tourism holds the most "hope" for a future of space? You must be kidding - it's space mining of natural resources that does hold most hopes, and for that, you can be any government you want, just be willing to spend the cash to get those resources.

Assuming a democracy, if all major allocation of resources was decided by the collective groupthink of the general public expressed through the government alone, such is likely to predictably avoid implementing unconventional thinking.

Really? How would that prevent unconventional thinking?
3) Unconventional thinking

For example, in the case of the space example again, the average person lacks the necessary combination of intelligence, knowledge, and interest to even realize that the astronomical expense of current rockets is not an unavoidable consequence of energy/fuel expense

Of course. The best person to realize that would be a scientist who presides over a space exploration program - he has both intelligence, knowledge AND resources. Surprise. What is more interesting, said scientist does not need to spend his time to aquire any massive resources the capitalist way, they have already been granted to him.

Happiness that helps make life worth living comes not solely from meeting basic needs alone like rations of rice and flour but, rather if those needs are met, also having some "wasteful" recreation and consumerist indulgences ...

You of course do realize that your "wasteful" recreation means someone, somewhere, is not getting the food and necessities he could get due to your overconsumption in that case, and his underconsumption, up to malnutrition?

What is more important, capitalism does not equal rampant consumerism, if you do push the system into a crisis, it will react with very harsh natural counters. People will only learn that the hard way when their welfare levels diminish, I guess

[Sea Skimmer]

Well rationing can work. If you're prepared to be like Hitler, and supress the black market with summary executions. How do people think Hitler rearmed himself despite the crushing economic factors? It sure wasn't because he was nice.

Are you kidding?

Nazi Germany had the most utterly fucked up ass backwards non integrated system of price and wage controls ever, and this was even before rationing was introduced. A black market thrived without question, and involved very high level party officials at times.

Nazi planning was a disaster overall, and the utter failure of Hitler’s economic plans (his four year plan called for removing ALL need for imports in that little time!) had a lot to do with his decision to attack Poland when he did. The Nazi rearmament was no stroke of brilliance, it failed to meet any of its goals at all and the hopelessly unrealistic plans had to be curtailed again and again.

Meanwhile the Nazis spent money so fast trying to keep everything afloat that even in 1935 they had barely 1 weeks worth of foreign exchange on hand at any given time. At one point the SS of all things, asked that more money be made available for Jews to cash out, so that more of them could be forced out of Germany! This request had to be refused owing to an utter lack of the required hard cash. Once it came to wartime, the Germans failed to mobilize efficiently, and achieved large increases in tank and fighter plane production mainly via not building very other weapons.

No, that’s not a system worth copying in any damn way at all. Considering the very topic of rationing is stemming from the need for sustainable development bringing up Nazi Germany doesn’t even begin to make sense. It’s at the utter opposite end of the spectrum.

[Sikon]

A hypothetical government with a philosophy leading to enforcing rationing and opposed to general capitalism is likely to not permit such blatant energy-intensive "overconsumption" as space tourism, the type of innovation occurring today which is the greatest source of hope for a future in space.

Um... you're of course aware that the USSR spent enormous amounts of money on space exploration? Of course, it wasn't the rich people who went up in "tourist" trips (useless waste of resources indeed), but professional cosmonauts, who did scientific research, and comprehensive exploration drone programs, like the "Luna", "Mars" and "Venus" series.

Launch expense needs to be reduced if mankind is to expand into space. Current launch costs equivalent to around the payload's mass in gold will never lead to cities in space, never lead to an expanding population of thousands and millions of permanent space colonists.

The main interesting relevant progress towards reduction of launch expense today is occurring in the private sector, with increasing interest in developing reusable rockets with rapid refurbishment. Like the X-prize concept of rapid turnaround with two launches of a reusable craft within 2 weeks, changes like that are important to avoid launch expense equivalent to throwing away a 747 aircraft after one flight.

There isn't a huge amount of relevant progress towards reducing launch expense actually being funded by governments. Indeed, for example, in regard to the past several decades, NASA's launch costs per unit mass of payload actually more than doubled between the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle.

However, this is not an either/or situation, where one is choosing exclusively between only governmental space programs or only private innovation, but the point is that the hope for the future is better if both exist, not just the former.

Space exploration is not space colonization. Mankind has launched space probes since more than a half-century ago, without starting any permanent human colonization of space. Such is perfectly capable of continuing with zero cities in space throughout the lifetime of everyone alive today, throughout the lifetime of the next generation, etc., until space programs are abandoned and until mankind dies out, unless there is change to the status quo first.

For example, based on past history, one can predict that, outside of external influence, the U.S. government's space program is doubtful to result in a major reduction in the cost of space access during the lifetime of those alive today, if ever.

That's not because individual engineers in NASA don't understand how to drastically reduce the cost of launch services. Those who have fully analyzed the issue do. A past post here gives a long discussion of the topic, such as NASA studies discussing how to obtain order of magnitude launch expense reduction, so let's skip repeating much of past posts. But concepts like the detailed study of the Sea Dragon and studies of mass drivers have existed for decades without the slightest progress towards such obtaining multi-billion-dollar government funding.

And that's because the trend has been for the general public and hence the government legislature to be perfectly satisfied with conducting space exploration rather than space colonization, not willing to divert finances away from other expenditures to make the first step of making low cost launch systems the development priority over all else.

Space tourism holds the most "hope" for a future of space?

Indirectly, yes, because it is causing progress towards reducing launch cost. There's little future in space until launch costs are no longer the current hundreds to thousands of times greater than fuel/energy costs. If suborbital tourists start being launched for $100,000 to $200,000 each as some startup companies are trying to obtain, there will be much motivation to reduce costs further, since the pool of customers goes up exponentially if costs are reduced.

At a high price, a handful of people in the world will be customers; if price is reduced further, the figure goes up to thousands; if funds from that are put into further progress reducing launch costs, the figure goes up to millions of people.

The potential pool of thousands to millions of customers is exactly the kind of economy of scale needed, in contrast to a handful of commercial satellite launches annually providing insufficient financial incentive for major progress in launch systems.

Suborbital tourism is not the same as launch to orbit, but, if a company has great success with making suborbital launches inexpensive through developing rapid-refurbishment reusable suborbital rockets, the chance of them later developing inexpensive reusable orbital launch vehicles is excellent.

You must be kidding - it's space mining of natural resources that does hold most hopes, and for that, you can be any government you want, just be willing to spend the cash to get those resources.

Certainly that's possible in principle, but the average Congressman isn't disposed to take funds away from other programs to fund what seems to the uninformed like a crazy scheme.

The preceding has focused mainly on the example of NASA, as opposed to the programs of other governments, but none has space settlement as its primary goal. Besides, even the Russian space agency has an order of magnitude less funding than NASA.

Assuming a democracy, if all major allocation of resources was decided by the collective groupthink of the general public expressed through the government alone, such is likely to predictably avoid implementing unconventional thinking.

Really? How would that prevent unconventional thinking?

An individual may hold unusual views far different from those of the average person, but, naturally, that is not the case for the public as a whole. Not surprisingly, government funding decisions are more likely to correspond to the average voter's preferences. That's exactly what history illustrates, a focus on national prestige and space exploration rather than space colonization: No Sea Dragon, no nuclear Orion, no mass drivers, etc.

For example, in the case of the space example again, the average person lacks the necessary combination of intelligence, knowledge, and interest to even realize that the astronomical expense of current rockets is not an unavoidable consequence of energy/fuel expense

Of course. The best person to realize that would be a scientist who presides over a space exploration program - he has both intelligence, knowledge AND resources. Surprise. What is more interesting, said scientist does not need to spend his time to aquire any massive resources the capitalist way, they have already been granted to him.

Intelligence and knowledge? Yes. Resources? Not necessarily, not if diverting enough billions of dollars for funding doesn't correspond to the desires of the general public or the legislature.

Heres's one example:
The engineers of the 1975 NASA space station summer study proposal created a plan for space colonization with infrastructure allowing a 10000-person spacestation to build a copy of itself in just six months. A comment made in response by Senator William Proxmire was as follows:

It's the best argument yet for chopping NASA's funding to the bone. As Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee responsible for NASA's appropriations, I say not a penny for this nutty fantasy.

Here's another example:
One government engineer, Dr. Zuppero, has various excellent proposals for retrieving extraterrestrial resources:



Such could drastically reduce the cost of material in orbit, to as little as tens of dollars a pound, far below the current thousands of dollars per pound. If developed, a $100/lb launch system could be used to launch the tanker craft from earth, with it subsequently repeatedly retrieving ice from near-earth objects. Here's an illustration for such a hypothetical commercial endeavor:



Yet what is the chance of anything like that 1992 proposal being funded by the U.S. government in the foreseeable future? Very little chance, judging from all past history.

Of course, free enterprise suffers from a shortage of funds for innovation too. However, just one of a number of startup companies continuing to get funded through to completion could start the desired chain of events: a progressively expanding space tourism market indirectly reducing launch costs more and more over time.

Happiness that helps make life worth living comes not solely from meeting basic needs alone like rations of rice and flour but, rather if those needs are met, also having some "wasteful" recreation and consumerist indulgences ... and ideally some hope, some potential for individual advancement.

You of course do realize that your "wasteful" recreation means someone, somewhere, is not getting the food and necessities he could get due to your overconsumption in that case, and his underconsumption, up to malnutrition?

I won't pretend to be altruistic enough to cancel internet access and sell my computer in order to personally donate the money.

However, as for the general situation, there's enough calories of food production in the world to feed anyone currently undernourished for a rather small portion of total economic income. Indeed, at under 20 cents per person per day for essential food, the hypothetical cost for the billion people currently undernourished is literally just a fraction of 1% of world GDP (PPP) of $70 trillion annually, although free food aid has complications requiring care to avoid driving local farmers out of business.

Of course, in practice, governments spend too few funds on altruism beyond their own borders.

The situation is complicated since countries with malnutrition can have a whole host of problems unsolvable by food aid alone. There can be reasons local food production became insufficient without food imports, such as starvation because local farmers were hacked to death with machetes during ethnic cleansing.

However, fundamentally, there does not have to be a zero-sum situation. Like mankind's total economic output has increased by orders of magnitude over history since the stone age, there is enough uranium and sunlight for energy for everyone, enough water, and enough cropland, if used well. Unfortunately, the current reality is obviously far inferior to what is theoretically possible.

Fortunately, there is progress, generation by generation. Once, all of mankind lived in filth, primitive poverty, and the frequent threat of starvation. Now, more of the world is industrializing. A particular example is that of those asian countries which rapidly transformed from third-world poverty to relative industrialized prosperity over several decades.

[Sikon]

EDIT: Minor fix:

A reference made to space probe launches more than a half century ago should be replaced with "about a half century ago."

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Sikon: All these projects you suggest are for small payloads. Scaling upwards isn't quite so linear, because engines get heavier as well, and one has to deal with other engineering issues that come along with it.

Plus, colonisation is going to require serious research into non-chemical engine designs, which is something the private sector isn't inclined to do whatsoever because of the high costs and the risks involved. Currently, the only projects that use alternative engines are space exploration projects where the use of these engines are more relevant, than putting some rich fool into space for the sake of bragging rights and extraneous experience.

[brianeyci]

Nazi planning was a disaster overall, and the utter failure of Hitler’s economic plans (his four year plan called for removing ALL need for imports in that little time!) had a lot to do with his decision to attack Poland when he did.

I did not know that.

You're saying the German economy would have collapsed if Hitler hadn't attacked anybody? It seems like not, since North Korea is still chugging along without collapse. I said as much myself that the measures weren't worth adopting unless you were prepared for totalitarian measures, but is it unsustainable even with such measures?

[brianeyci]

edit: sustainable I mean stop the widespread suffering of people. I don't particularly care if the SS don't have enough money to deport more guys, or they barely had enough money to build tanks.

This is an important question, because it goes back to the question when and where is it okay to adopt extreme measures, if at all.

[K. A. Pital]

The main interesting relevant progress towards reduction of launch expense today is occurring in the private sector, with increasing interest in developing reusable rockets with rapid refurbishment. Like the X-prize concept of rapid turnaround with two launches of a reusable craft within 2 weeks, changes like that are important to avoid launch expense equivalent to throwing away a 747 aircraft after one flight.

Are any of those real spaceships capable of lifting orbital payloads or just suborbital craft bravely called "Space Ships" by enthusiasts?

Indeed, for example, in regard to the past several decades, NASA's launch costs per unit mass of payload actually more than doubled between the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle.

The US may have boondogled it's own space program. That doesn't really make space tourism on suborbitals "space colonization". My own country had a superheavy "Energia" lifter which was quite surely one of the most efficient rocket lifters and actually could deliver meaningful payloads (instead of the meaty bodies of rich space-gazers).

But concepts like the detailed study of the Sea Dragon and studies of mass drivers have existed for decades without the slightest progress towards such obtaining multi-billion-dollar government funding.

Isn't there a joint Sea Launch program? Doesn't the Russian government participate in that?

And that's because the trend has been for the general public and hence the government legislature to be perfectly satisfied with conducting space exploration rather than space colonization, not willing to divert finances away from other expenditures to make the first step of making low cost launch systems the development priority over all else.

You may be assured that governments don't really lack the will to push on resource extraction, which is the primary reason for space colonization. Space tourism isn't connected to resource exploration and extraction in the slightest.

If suborbital tourists start being launched for $100,000 to $200,000 each as some startup companies are trying to obtain, there will be much motivation to reduce costs further, since the pool of customers goes up exponentially if costs are reduced.

Please, Sikon. I can't believe I'm hearing this tripe. The primary cause for space colonization is either scientific exploration or resource extraction. Suborbital flights by a group of richies do not make this any closer. All of the resources we need to extract from space are NOT in sub-orbital space, but quite further away.

Therefore, the waste on suborbital flight expansion and the creation of a fleet of tourist spaceships, sadly, is not only absolutely irrelevant to the task of faraway resource exploration and extraction, but it's also a major waste of resources. Suborbital fleets, even if they bring thousands of rich tourists up, mean jack shit to the greater task.

The potential pool of thousands to millions of customers is exactly the kind of economy of scale needed, in contrast to a handful of commercial satellite launches annually providing insufficient financial incentive for major progress in launch systems.

Oh please. For fuck's sake. That's like saying the expansion of civil airflight is important for space colonization. It's NOT. Those are fundamentally different tasks. No wonder you choose to single out satellites, which, for instance, have done far more than all your space tourist bonanza for the cause you champion.

Why? The need to send multiple resource exploration probes, even in higher earth orbits, is pushing forward the development of higher lifters, and interplanetary craft - things you need for space exploration and subsequent mining colonization. Suborbitals are absolutely irrelevant here. they're only marginally more relevant than cars.

How many successful jet aviation companies have developed long-range lifters with a good lift mass/energy ration? PLEASE NAME JUST ONE. So far I see goverments coping best with that task.

desires of the general public

Since when is the space exploration deparment subject to the wills of uneducated "public" and their elected legislature? Governments should grant budgets, but let expertise commitees, not fucking uneducated pricks, to draft plans how to spend the resources!

there's enough calories of food production in the world to feed anyone currently undernourished

Indeed so. However, the fact that industrial agriculture could do it and doesn't do it is all the more damning. It means that First Worlders quite willingly outcompete people for vital life resources such as grain, to feed their pets, livestock or even CAR ENGINES, I've touched upon this many times. I'm not saying they should collectively suicide for guilt because the current system behaves that way, but at least realizing what you're doing and making steps to correct it would be needed.

[Admiral Valdemar]

There is very little here that couldn't be possible today with a better funded programme. As with the food issue, yes, there is plenty of it (today at least), but no one ever went hungry from a shortage of food in their area. A lack of payment was always a bigger issue, even pre-green revolution.

That alone means addressing the shortfalls of our current economic system, rather than expand it off-world as is.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Since when is the space exploration deparment subject to the wills of uneducated "public" and their elected legislature? Governments should grant budgets, but let expertise commitees, not fucking uneducated pricks, to draft plans how to spend the resources!

That's the problem Stas, right there. In reality, the scientists and engineers don't ultimately have the final say; we don't live in a Technocracy where technical expert committees run things. We live in a world where people what don't have any technical expertise will go "fuck that shit," and threaten to cut funding, and they can do all of squat to stop it.

Come on, our own government alters scientific reports so they say what they want them to say. The Technocrats always get the shaft, it seems.

[Darth Wong]

In capitalist economies, the traditional method of altering commercial behaviour has been incentives, penalties, and restrictions, in the form of subsidies, taxes, and regulations. Not quite as blatant as communist-style rationing and command, but fairly effective and government-controlled nonetheless. For example, a typical capitalist government would not outright ban the ownership of more than one car per person; they would simply add "surtaxes" and licensing fees on multiple cars registered to one person. This way, the poor will tend to follow these new rules while the rich can thumb their noses at them and do whatever they want.

[Sikon]

If suborbital tourists start being launched for $100,000 to $200,000 each as some startup companies are trying to obtain, there will be much motivation to reduce costs further, since the pool of customers goes up exponentially if costs are reduced.

Please, Sikon. I can't believe I'm hearing this tripe. The primary cause for space colonization is either scientific exploration or resource extraction. Suborbital flights by a group of richies do not make this any closer. All of the resources we need to extract from space are NOT in sub-orbital space, but quite further away.

Therefore, the waste on suborbital flight expansion and the creation of a fleet of tourist spaceships, sadly, is not only absolutely irrelevant to the task of faraway resource exploration and extraction, but it's also a major waste of resources. Suborbital fleets, even if they bring thousands of rich tourists up, mean jack shit to the greater task.

The potential pool of thousands to millions of customers is exactly the kind of economy of scale needed, in contrast to a handful of commercial satellite launches annually providing insufficient financial incentive for major progress in launch systems.

Oh please. For fuck's sake. That's like saying the expansion of civil airflight is important for space colonization. It's NOT. Those are fundamentally different tasks. No wonder you choose to single out satellites, which, for instance, have done far more than all your space tourist bonanza for the cause you champion.

Why? The need to send multiple resource exploration probes, even in higher earth orbits, is pushing forward the development of higher lifters, and interplanetary craft - things you need for space exploration and subsequent mining colonization. Suborbitals are absolutely irrelevant here. they're only marginally more relevant than cars.

There is vastly more difference between rockets and cars than between suborbital and orbital rocket hardware, far more related from rocket engines to fuel tanks, as is also the case for rockets versus civil airflight. Making such a poor analogy does not show knowledge.

Although the example of the OTRAG concept in which the suborbital test vehicle and the orbital launch vehicle were to use the same rocket engines (with multiple stages and a far lower payload fraction for the latter, of course) is an extreme case, a suborbital rocket engine is vastly more similar to the rocket engines of an orbital launch vehicle than to a turbojet, turboprop, or internal combustion engine.

Usually anyone planning to launch orbital payloads first works on a suborbital rocket, even if a mere test vehicle, and the very logical step of starting with suborbital tourism first to obtain revenue for later orbital tourism and cargo launch is the goal.

For some general perspective, look at some past history. In the U.S., during the decade after WWII, work on rocket development led in May 1961 to the first American suborbital manned flight. The Redstone rocket launching Alan Shepard had 235/265 sec sea level/vacuum Isp with alcohol/LOX (slightly lower performance than the kerosene/LOX engines which became common later). Although a suborbital rocket in this implementation, a 3 stage vehicle based on the Redstone rocket was later used to put small 45 kg payloads into orbit by Australia in 1966-1967, with the tradeoff in going from suborbital to orbital being adding staging and having a lesser payload fraction but with a lot of the same hardware in that particular case. Nine months after that suborbital manned flight, an Atlas rocket in February 1962 launched John Glenn's orbital flight.

Although the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin, launched in April 1961, was not preceded by any manned suborbital mission, the Soviets still developed unmanned suborbital rockets (R-1, etc.) first before the modified R-7 (Vostok rocket) which did the manned launch to orbit.

Right now, there are only three entities in the entire world sending anyone into orbit: The national space agencies of the U.S., Russia, and China. Having been motivated by a mixture of scientific and exploratory goals plus milestones for national prestige (e.g. first astronaut / cosmonaut / taikonaut in space, first on the Moon, first on Mars), all have found launching at most a small number of people per year sufficient for their goals. Only one of those three national space agencies, NASA, has more than minimal funds. For example, the Russian program has an order of magnitude less funds.

NASA's mission is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research." Space colonization isn't in their mission statement. Of course, there are some individuals at NASA who would like to see space colonization and other massive usage of space, with NASA engineers having developed great concepts for such, but the agency as a whole has its expenditures allocated as set for it by Congress.

To reinforce the point that NASA's funded priority is scientific research and exploration, not developing the capability to launch thousands of tons and thousands of people annually for space colonization (or commercial resource extraction, for that matter), here's a budget overview:



There is no guarantee that inexpensive suborbital tourism will be developed over the coming decades, as it depends on whether one or more companies keep raising sufficient funds from investors, with such success uncertain, as said in the Science & Logic of Settling Solar System thread. However, such is the best hope when national space agencies aside from NASA have small, divided funds, considering that NASA is not headed towards the needed launch cost reduction.

The chance of NASA by itself sending more than a handful of people into space in the next several decades is extremely low, as such is not a funded goal. NASA's goal since 2004 has included working towards a lunar landing in 2015-2020 (as originally conceived ... though now around 2020 is the estimate mentioned) before eventually a mission to Mars under the Space Exploration Program. Such a goal is not guaranteed to be obtained, as the Space Exploration Initiative plan of 1989 for lunar landings in 2003-2004 and then a manned Mars mission was not obtained. More importantly, even if it is obtained, such is not about reducing launch costs, with sending up a small number of astronauts and a limited number of tons of hardware being sufficient for the exploration program, from the lunar goals to having humans step foot on Mars.

As one example of interesting private sector activities, the Virgin Galactic company is the successor to the repeated, reusable launch of the suborbital SpaceShipOne with two manned flights into space within 2 weeks with rapid refurbishment. That is different from the average expendable rocket: economically like throwing away a 747 airline aircraft after one flight. The company is funded by the billionaire Richard Branson among others (the chief owner of Virgin Atlantic airlines). With work having continued since that 2004 success, Virgin Galactic is planning to complete their second generation craft for passenger service in 2008, with subsequently around 12 to 18 months of test flights before commercial operation.

A little like early aviation, initially the domain of the rich and eccentric, it would take a moderate number of additional years for expansion before such went from a limited number of customers to sending up tens of thousands of people per year.

Yet that would be a funded goal, potentially funded and driven by initial success in a self-reinforcing positive feedback cycle in which more passengers mean more revenue and more economy of scale with amortization of reusable rockets over many launches, allowing further launch price reduction that leads to more customers.

Another example is the major European aerospace company EADS having estimated that they could build a system launching suborbital space tourists for $200,000, which would be a vast factor of 150 price reduction by two orders of magnitude compared to the current (orbital) space tourist tickets of Space Adventures for $30 million each.

As one random example of the expense of ordinary expendables, a launch of the Atlas D used about $0.04 million of kerosene and liquid oxygen, converted to today's dollars, while the rocket itself cost $27 million ... a launch cost which exceeded fuel expense by three orders of magnitude.

To instead have rapidly refurbished reusable rockets only costing a more moderate number of times fuel/energy expense could be revolutionary. It would mean similar practices could be applied to make larger boosters serving as the first stage of an orbital launch vehicle, also contributing towards what is needed for cost reduction on the second stage.

Large scale inexpensive space tourism, even initially only suborbital, could finally shatter the status quo.

Even the likelihood of the public and NASA remaining happily satisfied with just continuing to launch a handful of astronauts on $1+ billion Space Shuttle missions would be much decreased in that event, since thousands of suborbital tourist tickets selling for less than a thousandth as much each could spur interest in a greater national space program. Maintaining current economic performance might finally become embarrassing.

Although the desires of the general public which indirectly determine space program funding are focused on scientific exploration alone currently, that is in significant part because almost 100% of the public assumes anything more could not be affordable, especially with the widespread fuel/energy cost myth. There actually would be less negligible public interest in larger scale space activities if reaching space became within the realm of possibility for Joe Q Public, if people started seeing major progress as happening and likely to accelerate in their lifetimes.

There is an increased chance of launch cost reduction with both private companies and government space agencies operating, beyond that with the latter alone. It is a classic situation where A + B is not less than B alone. And A + B can be greater than B alone.

To have suborbital rockets send people into space for ~ $100k-$200k and eventually potentially well under $10k each would destabilize the status quo. That compares to today's Space Shuttle launches for $1300000k each. Such suborbital space tourism would probably not result in the long-term continuation of current orbital launch economics: What is needed to make both suborbital and orbital launch no longer cost several orders of magnitude more than fuel/energy expense is too related.

The need to send multiple resource exploration probes, even in higher earth orbits, is pushing forward the development of higher lifters, and interplanetary craft - things you need for space exploration and subsequent mining colonization.

Please be more specific as to what you are trying to reference, with specific names of what craft launched by which corporation or space agency, so one can see what you think are these "resource exploration probes" "in higher earth orbits." Perhaps the latter is meant to be a reference to geosynchronous earth orbit, a common orbit much higher than LEO, mostly used for some communications satellites, but the satellites sent there are not suitable to be called resource exploration probes. Satellites for terrestrial resource surveying would not be relevant in this context, and, besides, such tend to be in lower orbits.

Perhaps you mean to reference probes sent not just to earth orbit but rather on interplanetary trajectories instead. Recent history includes the Cassini mission to Saturn & Titan, the NEAR spacecraft flyby of the asteroid Eros, etc., but such are scientific missions. A NEO (near earth object) with much less delta v to reach like 1988TA, 1991BN, 1990MF, etc. would be a suitable target if the goal was instead a commercial resource survey (although there's actually a shortage of even telescope reflection spectroscopy study of economically relevant objects, as opposed to larger, more distant bodies of greater pure science interest).

Still, such would be premature at this time when a necessary prerequisite to economically practical usage of extraterrestrial resources is to first reduce launch costs, rather than having even a drink of water for an astronaut continue to cost the equivalent of a terrestrial worker's monthly wages to send up at thousands of dollars per kilogram.

Alternately, you could try to reference proposals not actually funded, but that would be in a category like NASA's multi-million-ton spacestation concept of three decades ago.

And that's because the trend has been for the general public and hence the government legislature to be perfectly satisfied with conducting space exploration rather than space colonization, not willing to divert finances away from other expenditures to make the first step of making low cost launch systems the development priority over all else.

You may be assured that governments don't really lack the will to push on resource extraction, which is the primary reason for space colonization.

See the earlier budget overview. Governments are not funding resource extraction or its necessary prerequisite of drastic reduction in launch costs.

If thousands or millions of people start going to space, such as if space tourism drops launch costs, then the public and their governments could get very interested in what space industrialization could mean, militarily and otherwise, and there might be a space race between nations way beyond that of past history. Space agencies might see even order of magnitude budget increases, perhaps. But that's not the case today.

The primary reason for extraterrestrial resource extraction is to support space colonization, rather than the other way around.

The best reason for space colonization is to have a space civilization, for the long-term survival, prosperity, and expansion of mankind. The extraterrestrial resources of greatest value aren't helium-3 or platinum-group metals, although the latter are worth up to a small number of billions of dollars per year, but, rather, the rock, ices, aluminum, and nickel-iron needed for construction of space habitats and space industry, not so much shipping resources back to the ground as shipping extraterrestrial material to construction in earth orbit and elsewhere.

In earth history, the Spanish obtained more gold from the New World, but the English focused more on pedestrian bulk resources like utilizing land, engaging more in colonization than shipping resources back to the homeland. It is the latter who prospered most in the long term. (Of course, treatment of the native population was bad, but that's irrelevant to the analogy here). Iridium, gold, etc. shipped to earth from asteroids may be side benefits of space industrialization, but it is the practically unlimited amount of solar energy, ice, metal, etc. available for use in space that has great potential.

Indeed, for example, in regard to the past several decades, NASA's launch costs per unit mass of payload actually more than doubled between the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle.

My own country had a superheavy "Energia" lifter which was quite surely one of the most efficient rocket lifters and actually could deliver meaningful payloads (instead of the meaty bodies of rich space-gazers).

Energia was discontinued with the collapse of the Soviet Union. As for vehicles which continued in operation, Russian rockets have relatively good economics by today's standards (such as the Proton being a number of times less expensive than the Space Shuttle per ton), but, still, all current launch vehicles are around 2+ orders of magnitude above fuel/energy expense. The Soviet/Russian and U.S. space programs have been rather similar in having great accomplishments from the perspective of research and exploration but with launch capacity remaining a small number of people both generations ago and now.

But concepts like the detailed study of the Sea Dragon and studies of mass drivers have existed for decades without the slightest progress towards such obtaining multi-billion-dollar government funding.

Isn't there a joint Sea Launch program? Doesn't the Russian government participate in that?

Sea Launch uses Zenit rockets to send up a few ton satellite payload, launching several times per year depending on the market demand. Its economics are competitive by current standards compared to other existing rockets. However, without economy of scale, launching only a handful of tons annually automatically leads to an enormous launch cost of millions of dollars of dollars per ton. There are basic multi-million dollar fixed costs with any space operations, and the non-reusable rockets have dry weight hardware costing hundreds to thousands of dollars per kilogram expended on each launch.

Unfortunately, it makes more financial sense from the perspective of a government or company wanting to launch a particular satellite today to spend tens of millions of dollars to launch it on such an existing rocket, instead of spending billions on developing an entirely new launch system like the Sea Dragon, which rather reduces launch cost by orders of magnitude but requires economy of scale.

The Sea Dragon concept is totally different, a method to launch thousands of tons per year for costs that NASA subsequently verified would be just $60 to $600 per kilogram of payload (the exact figure depending on factors including launch frequency). Around a million dollars was spent developing the design in detail, but it was not funded on the billion-dollar scale necessary for manufacture. Within the context of only research and space exploration being NASA's funded goals, high launch capacity was viewed as only needed for a Mars mission,* for which plans were scaled back in the 1970s, and the Sea Dragon was never built.

Such is discussed in more detail in the thread previous linked here.

* Unfortunately, a future Mars mission, if such does someday occur decades from now, is less likely to stimulate massive launch capacity development by NASA, as such is no longer needed under more modern concepts using fuel production from the atmosphere on Mars for the return trip. That is a change more efficient from the standpoint of Apollo-style exploration, but such avoids investing in the launch cost reduction needed to launch huge numbers of people and massive amounts of hardware for space colonization.

No wonder you choose to single out satellites, which, for instance, have done far more than all your space tourist bonanza for the cause you champion.

With the tiny mass of satellites launched per year, there is a lack of sufficient financial incentive for large aerospace corporations to spend enough funds on developing much cheaper launch vehicles. As a random example with arbitrary figures, imagine launching 10 tons a year now at $10000/kg to get $0.1 billion a year revenue. Try to develop a cheaper launch system and plan to charge $1000/kg or $100/kg, and that same 10 tons per year would only give just $0.01 billion or $0.001 billion annual revenue.

Get a larger share of the total market after cost reduction, reach a few times more launch volume, such as tens of tons a year, and it is still far less than the original revenue. Such would not work as a business plan for paying back billion-dollar expense for a new launch system. Of course, it is possible for the situation to be different through vastly increased demand occurring when prices are reduced, but counting on that to a substantial degree requires more than pessimistic, conservative business planning focused on short-term financial costs versus returns.

Major aerospace corporations like McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta performed minimum cost design concept studies several decades ago but did not fund them when outside investors were not forthcoming, since there was not guaranteed net financial gain for the large development costs, not from a conservative short-term business perspective. (See prior discussion here).

The special aspect of space tourism is that the market involves thousands to millions of customers, with every decrease in launch cost increasing the number of customers. The total revenue pool indisputably increases as launch price is lowered over the relevant range. The beauty of starting with suborbital tourism is it makes development costs relatively low, while, once it succeeds, there would be a tendency to start investing some revenues into the higher development cost of its natural extension, orbital tourism ... and then the reusable rocket technology works for cargo launch too.

How many successful jet aviation companies have developed long-range lifters with a good lift mass/energy ration? PLEASE NAME JUST ONE. So far I see goverments coping best with that task.

The U.S. aerospace corporations (Boeing, etc.) are companies with private shareholders in the general public. Government contracts are frequent, but they are not state owned.

desires of the general public

Since when is the space exploration deparment subject to the wills of uneducated "public" and their elected legislature? Governments should grant budgets, but let expertise commitees, not fucking uneducated pricks, to draft plans how to spend the resources!

It is the case in practice, though, that spending is mostly locked into place by past history and by politics. Short of unpopularly transferring funds away from terrestrial government programs, which the average voter would view as spending funds unavailable in a time of war and deficits, funding development of a massive lift launch system would require painfully cutting back current space program activities in order to redirect funds.

Any such step doesn't tend to happen. Cancel funding for the ISS, and international relations with other partners are harmed, while that entails doing something few politicians would consider: embarrassingly admitting a mistake. Promptly cancel funding for the Space Shuttle, and the many thousands of workers supporting it worry about losing their jobs.

As a result, although the U.S. technically could cause order of magnitude reduction in the cost per kilogram to orbit within a few years for literally on the order of only 0.01% of annual GDP in development spending each year, it doesn't happen.

In reality, such could pay for itself many times over in the long-term. Drastically reducing launch cost would vastly reduce the cost of space hardware in general. For example, if engineering is conducted according to a mass exchange constant as is logical, if the launch cost is thousands of dollars per kilogram, it is worthwhile to spend thousands or millions of dollars to make a super fancy custom-made component rather than using a cheaper commercial off-the-shelf equivalent if the former shaves even a tiny amount of weight. The net effect is that extreme launch cost indirectly vastly increases even the manufacture cost of space hardware. Without this situation, even space exploration would benefit in the long-term, with even probes becoming far cheaper and more numerous.

Most issues in space are solvable with the cheap launch capacity to industrialize space and retrieve extraterrestrial resources. Space radiation? How to implement sufficient mass shielding is known well enough, just an unaffordable option with today's launch costs and lack of access to extraterrestrial resources. Effects of zero-g on the human body? Without spaceships being so tiny (lacking almost any mass to spare), implementing artificial gravity in some areas is no problem. Life support? Similar idea.

But, in the short-term, such as funding for the next several fiscal years, it would not be popular with voters, legislators, or many other people, to cancel Mars probes in order to divert funding to a project like the Sea Dragon. With space exploration being fascinating and desirable in itself, such is understandable, albeit unfortunate in the big picture.

[Sikon]

Sikon: All these projects you suggest are for small payloads. Scaling upwards isn't quite so linear, because engines get heavier as well, and one has to deal with other engineering issues that come along with it.

There are not problems with rocket size within the relevant range, even up to the gigantic Sea Dragon (described in more detail with payload size mentioned here). Of course it has heavier engines than a small rocket, but it has enough increase in thrust too, with the thrust to weight ratio being what matters for engine performance (along with Isp). A side benefit of the Sea Dragon's size is exceptionally low atmospheric drag losses relative to mass, due to the low surface area to mass ratio.

However, even the preceding is not of greatest relevance. The most relevant aspect is economy of scale in terms of the total cumulative payload launch mass, such as sending up thousands of people over repeated reusable launches.

Even small rapid-refurbishment reusable rockets like those likely to first be developed for space tourism can vastly exceed the economics of today's expendable boosters.

Plus, colonisation is going to require serious research into non-chemical engine designs, which is something the private sector isn't inclined to do whatsoever because of the high costs and the risks involved. Currently, the only projects that use alternative engines are space exploration projects where the use of these engines are more relevant, than putting some rich fool into space for the sake of bragging rights and extraneous experience.

The key first step is launch cost reduction to earth orbit, as might be simulated by space tourism. If the expense became no longer ~ 100 to 1000 times fuel/energy cost, then there could be increased commercial use of space for a variety of purposes: space hotels, special advantages of the microgravity and near-perfect vacuum for manufacturing of some high-value items like some semiconductors, communication satellites dropping in expense and increasing in power to outcompete terrestrial alternatives in more applications, etc.

With the expanded usage of space, in that case it should be only a matter of time before some proposals equivalent to Boeing's Solar Orbit Transfer Vehicle (SOTV) concept are funded by investors seeing sufficient market demand, such as for transfer of many satellites from LEO to geosynchronous transfer orbit. Solar-powered vehicles are better than chemical rocket engines in the interorbital transfer application where gradual thrusting is sufficient ... once there is expanded usage of space so transports can pay for themselves with a substantial number of customers. This is a matter of funding the manufacture of concepts of which the needed engineering is well understood: solar-electric or solar-thermal, aside from the nuclear options.

Zuppero's Neofuel web page is one illustration of what can be accomplished with solar power for extraterrestrial material retrieval. Either solar or nuclear power can be used. In the following example, the key aspect is use of extraterrestrial ice already in space, making propellant efficiency less important when it doesn't have to be launched from earth:



Although solar options are sufficient, nuclear power has some advantages, and that needs government approval and involvement. However, while space tourism is the best hope for the key first step of reducing space launch costs, once that occurs, a lot could change with government space activities as well as the private sector. Proposals for major government-funded space infrastructure projects could start to be viewed by the public and legislators as reasonable and politically plausible, to support a growing segment of the national economy in that event, rather than superficially seeming absurd now when a nation of 300 million people can't send one in a million people to space per year.